The National Parks, Americas Best Idea (PBS) looks set to be another triumph
for Ken Burns, says Rachel Ray.

Even without a fascinating back story, the sumptuous photography of The National Parks, America's Best Idea would be enough for most viewers.

But there is a compelling tale to tell of greed, politics, violence and spirituality, and filmmaker Ken Burns, who has devoted his career to producing historical cultural sagas for U.S. public television, does so with his usual flair and high standards.

Six years in the making, The National Parks is a twelve-hour, six-part documentary series filmed all over the United States from Alaska to the Florida Everglades that explores an idea as uniquely American as the Declaration of Independence: American taxpayers should own their nation’s natural splendor.

In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln essentially created the first national park by signing legislation that turned over Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove to the care of California. Along with Yosemite, the United States now has 58 parks with the mid-Atlantic state of Delaware being the only jurisdiction with no national park land.

In the series’ opening show, wolves are howling, native drums are beating, red lava is flowing, green mist is swirling, geysers are spewing, and avalanches are moving in America’s national parks.

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Narrator Peter Coyote gives an overview of the park system which includes “84 million acres of some of the most stunning landscapes in the world and still-growing trees that were saplings before the time of Christ”.

In this first show, Mr. Burns hits hard on the spiritual dimension of nature promoting the concepts that “nature is embedded in our DNA” and that we are “part of, not masters of the natural world.”

But just as dramatic as the footage of nature is the history of politics in creating Yosemite.

Through his publication “Hutchings’ California Magazine” Englishman James Hutchings promoted the Yosemite Valley more than anyone, largely for personal gain. He sued the United States in 1875 alleging that the legislation making Yosemite public property was unconstitutional. But the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Act and Hutchings was evicted from his hotel in the valley.

Hutchings had hired naturalist and inventor John Muir, a Scotsman who had endured an abusive upbringing by his minister father, to run his saw mill. Muir’s self-confessed “unconditional surrender to nature” created a guru-like relationship with Yosemite and her visitors. Muir would climb to the top of tall trees during violent storms to experience what the trees were enduring. His meticulous journals would provide the basis for widely circulated articles about the park.

It’s too soon to tell if The National Parks is Mr. Burn’s “best idea” but based on Episode One, it’s a great one.